Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Induldging in some red today, some lovely deep, shimmery red that came in a bottle with Stargazer 315 written on it. Mmmmm.

Stargazer 315. A good red.

I do like this red and I'm not really a red polishy person. But the colour on this is divine and very well pigmented, needing two coats for full opacity but you might get away with one. This may make a good stamping polish as well, shall put that to the test. The finish looks a bit metallic but has a shimmery shimmer to as well, and was it mentioned that I do like this red?

Again, I'm trying out some stuff suitable for occasion where I have to wear a dress (OWIHTWAD for short). Not bought the dress yet, BTW, I'll probably end up getting a dress that matches me nails at this rate. Plus I don't know what colour to have my hair ... anyway, there was a stamping idea for the OWIHTWAD.

Bit like floral French Horns

These swirly-whirly flowery designs are off the HB-52 plate and the stamping polish is Stargazer Chrome 232 (silver). A bit of topcoat went over the top and bish-bosh, job done. I quite like this one which means it will quickly be ruined.

Sunday, 29 May 2011

I always got told not to wear green as it is an unlucky colour. No reason was given for the unlucky, no explanation or justification, just, "don't wear green", and I didn't wear it at all for years. Wot a scaredy-cat. Now I will prove to you with, errr, SCIENCE, that green is not an unlucky colour, it's quite nice actually.

METHOD, DATA and OBSERVATIONS
I started off with some Superdrug MUA Shade 13, which is a good, bold green with a bit of a soft side to it. Is the name 13 unlucky? We'll find out. You may be able to note the slightly pearly finish and the smoothly-applied two coats; yep, they all look fine, a bottle costs a quid at Superdrug, good job, now back to the science.

Superdrug MUA Shade 13. Is it unlucky?

I observed no bad luck and did really well on Guitar Hero Metallica - maybe green wasn't so unlucky after all. Testing the theory further, I applied more green in the form of Nfu.Oh 056 over top of the MUA Shade 13.

Delicious, yummy flakies

I'l love a tank in this colour, but without the tip-wear, ta.

Then wonderful things happened:

My <3 football team Stevenage Boro got promoted to League One. Such a beautiful, totally unexpected thing. Should have put a fiver on it at the beginning of the season.

Manchester United lost the Champions League. Haha.

Mr Luton and I completed a good section of Army of Two TFD co-op on Contractor difficulty with no arguments whatsoever -- a very, very rare and unusual side-effect indeed. Rubbish game, mind.

Friday, 27 May 2011

This is a good, solid neutral shade with quite the pearly finish that I'm not sure I like. No moans about the application as it went on well enough, only needing two coats for good coverage.

Fancied some tribal patterns and maybe a spot of flower and dug out plates HB43 and Fauxnad m71 for some hot, stamping action. I used Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) and Konad White Special Polish as the stamping polishes, then coloured in the petals with some pink Laura Paige 26 Limited Edition and shaded the centre of the flower with some random brown gift-set polish. The picture on the left is of the right ring-finger -- the stamping came out really well on that one. Picture below is of the left hand which came out a bit wonky and smudgy :(

Tuesday, 24 May 2011

Righty. Great colour but the formula on this was an 'orrible, runny affair and required around six or seven coats to get some opacity going. However, it is chock-full of green shimmer -- that and the runniness should make this polish brilliant for layering over other colours.

I wasn't happy with the VNL and layered a quick coat of Orly Halleys Comet over the top. Lovely.

This is lovely. Why did it have to get ruined? :(

Not long after the application of this very yummy colour, my Helmer turned up. I had to put it together immediately, despite freshly painted nails and bastards stealing my screwdrivers. I reciprocated by stealing their screwdrivers and got to work. Carefully.

Naturally, this putting together of a large metallic object trashed my nails to next week, and a heavy Konad repair was needed.

Rabble of butterflies going mental for flower

Fact of the day: there are two collective nouns for butterflies - a swarm or a rabble (my fav).

I stamped a silhouetted rabble of butterflies on the nails using the design on Bundle Monster plate BM-205, then applied the large flower on plate GCOCL A02 (same as the M71 Hello Kitty plate, only the designs are bigger). This was done with the Konad Special White polish which was then shaded with some NYC East Village - that mega-sheerness came in handy. Finally, a blob of glitter was put in the centre of the flower and top coat applied. Yay.

Saturday, 21 May 2011

Purpurfärgen is Swedish for the colour purple, (thank you alizarine claws for your Swedish word of the day, it's brilliant). Purpurfärgen is also a good way to express my current thing for purple, eg, this week I have been in a state of purpurfärgen as I can't stop wearing purple on my nails.

ELF Lilac Swatch. This would count as a purple, yeah?

ELF Lilac, as the name would strongly suggest, is lilac with a bit of a grey tinge to it. Goes on nicely, and covers well in three coats, with maybe a bit of streakiness, which is why I applied four coats.

Stamping polish is definitely purple

Some floral Konading as I'm trying things out for a special occassion where I have to wear a dress :O Used the GCOCL G14 / K02 plate and 2True Shade 13 (purple) as the stamping polish, which did the job quite nicely :)

Blue Steel glitter pose.

By the time Friday evening came around the nails were ready for a spot of bling. Barry M 239 Lavender Hexograms polish was the perfect companion, with its chunks of lavender square glitter and fabby silver shimmer.

I had to apply four coats to cover up the the black Konading and it still looked a bit patchy. Nevertheless, Accessorize Ruby Sparkle had some wonderful colour going on that reminded me of the Needler weapon in Halo; I just wanted to spray it everywhere and watch everything explode in a pink, glassy boom.

Blurry glitter shot. *Boom*

The colouring starts to shift under dim lighting, and the horrible noisy picture below shows how the colour starts grooving when near a laptop screen.

Can't get a decent picture of this

There wasn't meant to be any Konad abuse today but my tips got ruined and I couldn't be arsed with glitter removal. The tips got a quick sponging of 2True Shade 16 (purple), and were then stamped with a full nail design from Fauxnad plate m55 (Konad m51) and some Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black).

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Squeezing out a quick post about more purple polish, as I appear to have acquired loads of them. Some of them look exactly the same as others, which is a bit of a bummer, but some of them, like China Glaze Flying Dragon, are unique and interesting.

China Glaze Flying Dragon. Three coats.

Despite being interesting and unique, Flying Dragon is a purple that I'm not sure about TBH. It is a bright shade of magenta with bits of pink and purple shimmery glitter that dries to a darker matte finish - looks a bit shiny in the above photo as it was applied last night and has since been exposed to matte-killing moisturisers and other such things.

Stop going on about the shopping list, I'm trying to caption this photo

The Konading job was meant to be a quick going over with Bundlemonster plate BM207, Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) and some top coat, but I proper messed the ring finger up and had to shade in around the stamped pattern. It didn't really work out and I'm a bit meh about how it looks so it looks like another Pink Wednesday tomorrow.

Sunday, 15 May 2011

Today I am wearing Nubar Purple Rain as I felt that this particular Sunday would not be complete without Prince's Purple Rain going through my head for hours and hours and hours.

Photos are all in natural light on an overcast, grey day.

Nubar Purple Rain looks much better than this photo

Nubar Purple Rain is a gorgeous polish with a deep purple base and pink, purple and mutli-coloured glitter. Application was smooth and trouble-free and three coats were required to get a proper opaque finish. Lovely.

Close-up shot and blurry glitter shot

A Konading of flowers was next. Plate of the day was GCOCL G16 / K04, and the polishes used Stargazer Chrome 234 (pink) mixed with a spot of the white GCOCL polish (available from eBay). This worked out quite well - I'd had issues with the GCOCL polishes being a bit sheer, rubbery and hard to work with but they appear to work nicely when combined with other polishes.

Shiny Konading.

For some reason my nails reminded me of hairdressers driving silver convertible Mercedes with tennis racquets scattered about the back seat and I went over it a couple of coats of ELF Matte Finisher. Also tried out a new finger pose, which was exciting.

Saturday, 14 May 2011

ISTR banging on about Wednesday's Urban Decay Exhaust making my fingers look a bit grey, prompting me to replace the silvery-pinky-mauve with some, errrr, more grey.

An Accessorize Idol swatch, chillin' in the sun.

Accessorize Rock Star Idol is a dark, charcoal grey with a very prominent silver shimmer, nicely dark with a good bit of blinginess to it. The application was OK, maybe a bit thick and lumpy but I did only need one coat for good opacity. This would probably work nicely as a stamping polish, actually, must give that a go.

Did my tips again as it's my thang at the moment. Decided on one of the tip patterns on Bundlemonster plate BM17 and some Stargazer Chrome 232 (silver), stamped away, and found it hard to get the buggers straight. Tips are hard :( The interestingly-angled bits were quickly painted over with some more of the Accessorize Idol and it looked a bit better.

Can't do tips straight

Chucked a skull on an accent finger because, you know, skull. This particular design is from the skull-feste plate that is HB-05, (here it is at NailArt Und Mehr, there's some on eBay as well). This was also stamped with the Stargazer silver chrome polish.

It all got mattified during Blogger's downtime with some ELF Matte Top Coat. I like it matte, it's quite Orly Iron Butterfly. Maybe. It looked even better with two coats of the ELF matte topcoat but there are no pics of further mattness, as it was dark.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby

I like this polish, I put it on on Thursday and it's still going. Brilliant.

So blimey, Konad Abuse got tagged with a Kreativ Blog Award by the lovely KarenD at Frazzle and Aniploish -- thank you KarenD, you've given my blogging self-esteem a warm little glow :)

Got to now list 10 facts about moi, which is really hard, especially when it's already been done once but Blogger ate the draft :(

1). I was born with an amazing gift for losing pens, lighters, glasses, etc, just by being in contact with them.

2). I once had a Mercedes badge stuck to my hand and it took nine fireman to remove it (there was a doctor and some nurses too, and hydraulic cutters, a small generator and other apparatus but they didn't use them.)

4). Play the guitar and bass but can't at the moment because of my nails.

5). I play Guitar Hero and Rock Band plastic guitar games instead.

6). Actually, I probably play too many video games and did enjoy going online, meeting interesting people then missing shooting them. but I spent my Xbox Live sub money on nail polish so I don't as much now.

7). I've got this <3 thing about space elevators.

8). Seriously need some new saucepans. Mine are falling apart.

9). The number 9. It's great.

10). I recently learnt to knit and tried to knit lovely blokey a scarf but it came out shaped and sized like a toilet seat cover. Magnificent.

Also got to tag 10 blogs, so I'm going for the ones that have greatly contributed to my nail varnish wishlist, made me go "ooh" or ":D", that sort of thing:

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Seem to be wearing far too many dark colours lately and was starting to fall back into my rut of wearing only purples and blues again, so I thought I'd have a go at Pink Wednesday with some Urban Decay Exhaust. Photos are a bit meh and grey today as they were lit by my little desk-lamp that doesn't really care for my finger-posing.

Urban Decay Exhaust Swatch on a grey day. Bottle has seen better days.

Urban Decay Exhaust is an oldie but a goodie -- it's a glass-flecked pinky mauve that is very sheer but in a nice way. I applied four coats and went on smoothly enough, covering up my 'orrible polish-stained nails well enough. Was tempted with a fifth coat but thought I'd be daring by just wearing four.

I didn't want to cover-up all the gorgeous colour and texture so I just Konaded the tips with a floral pattern with GCOCL plate G13 and Stargazer Chrome 232 (silver), and dotted the centres of the flowers with some Stargazer Chrome 234 (pink). I'd not done Konaded nail tips before and was well pleased that I managed to stamp the design on in a fairly straight manner.

My first Konaded tips. Needz moar light.

You should be able to find a bottle of Urban Decay Exhaust on eBay, and the set of eight GCOCL plates are also available on Ebay from Syster.

Sunday, 8 May 2011

Got some nice bits for my birthday t'other day, some polishes, some tattoos, some dosh, some other stuffs and a camera. Hurray, a new camera to love, adore and eventually complain about :)

Boots 17 Lasting Fix Midnight Sapphire was one of the pressies that went on the nails almost immediately. It covered well enough at two coats, but three went on cos that is how I roll.

Boots 17 Lasting Fix Midnight Sapphire Swatch

It's got a nice royal blue shimmer to it that the Old Camera sadly couldn't pick up. You can just about make out some shimmer in the photo but there's a lot more of it IRL.

Unaware that there would be new camera, I put some Nubar Night Sparkle (another pressie \o/) over the Midnight Sapphire and went, "oooooh pretty" for a while and did stuff. Around this time New Camera came along and photos of glittery nails were taken.

Boots 17 Midnight Sapphire and Nubar Night Sparkle in sunlight

The New Camera felt really dinky compared to the old one, and it appeared to take much better pictures of glitter as well. Result

Night Sparkle is the most gorgeous blue glitter polish that I have ever seen (but I've not seen all that many TBH). The glitter is very blue, very dense and covers wonderfully but it does like to slurp up the topcoat. I had to cover it with two good coats which really made the blue glitter look amazing, so amazing it was kept as is for a couple of days. Blimey.

Bit of BM207 and Nubar Night Sparkle under artificial light

It got a gratuitous Konading at the end of the weekend, using the stripey pattern on Bundle Monster plate BM207 and Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) polish. Going to try and set some sort of record with this one and try and keep it on a bit longer.

*Late edit: Trying to get the hang of New Camera by playing with macro mode and I felt compelled to put up more pictures of glitter.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

I wasn't actually going to wear green again this week*, but it has made its way into my favourite colours. This is good, cos I've always had an irrational fear about wearing colour (except for purple and blue) and am generally found stomping about in black.

Anyway, my local chemists had a surprise in store for me t'other day. A green surprise.

Laura Paige 57 Limited Edition Swatch

Laura Paige 57 Limited Edition was the green surprise at the chemist. It's a metallic shimmery apple-green that isn't quite as vividly green as a Granny Smith apple, and not quite as golden as a Golden Delicious. It went on well, only taking two coats to look good and dried nice and fast. The finish was a little bit bumpy which was easily fixed with a quick going-over of top coat, and it was about then I realised that this polish would look bloody brilliant mattified.

I was wondering which matte top coat would win in a fight and put some to the test. The index finger (left) is sporting some Mavala Matt Top Coat, middle finger has Rimmel Pro Matte Finish and the ring finger got some ELF Matte Finisher. Couldn't decide which one was the best -- the Mavala was definitely the mattest but the other two looked more shimmery.

These Bundlemonster full nail stamps are blinkin' brilliant.

Today's Konad abuse is made with Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black), Bundlemonster plate BM201 and the number '9'. The nails did originally have a stamping of gold but it hardly showed up at all. Can't go wrong with black, though.

Have to say that these new Bundlemonster full nail designs are really nicely done, good work!

*Did actually fancy wearing a bit of blue but there's an election & referendum today and I didn't want people thinking that I was a Tory :O

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

It's time for another random pick from the Boots 17 Gift Set, and it's a colour that makes me feel old, really old. Boots 17 High Gloss Twilight Teaser, come on down!

Boots 17 High Gloss Twilight Teaser Swatch

The polish itself is a nice nanny colour and pretty sheer, taking four coats to get the coverage you see above. I'm not sure if I like it for the right reasons though, cos I'm 99.9% sure that Twilight Teaser was an 80s classic lipstick that I used to write "Me <3 Raul" on a the sheltered side of either Tesco or Fads. Lasted years and years up there too. Raul, however, didn't.

Some badly stamped nails, earlier

Gave it a very messy Konading with Bundle Monster plate BM 210 and some Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black). It looks a bit rubbish because my hands are extremely non-cooperative today, however the plate itself is lovely and produced some fabby stamps on my other hand, albeit upside down :)

There then followed a slight polish ruining incident whilst cleaning the cooker and I thought that some glitter would hide the majority of the damage. Some Saffron Colour 44 - a sheer, pinky shimmery, glittery polish - was applied over the top and it was an improvement of sorts.

Sunday, 1 May 2011

It's Opi At Your Quebec & Call and I've no idea where it came from, it just appeared in my posh nail varnish box. As you can see it's got a nice bit o' shimmer to it but I'm not sure what colour to class this as, it looks like a khaki-gold. Ghaki, maybe? I'd never normally wear this colour but it's alright it is. Could be better, though.

Some HB plates from Nailart & Mehr arrived the same day as the new Bundlemonster plates and it was their turn for the Stompystampy treatment. I loves me some tribal so dug out plate HB43.

Tribal cover-up makes everything alright

It took me ages to pick a pattern, and in the end went for the tribal knotty design. Gave the nails a bit of a stamping with Collection 2000 Alloys 292 (gold), went over that with Superdrug MUA Shade 2 (black) and now I like this colour, it's really quite \m/